Category: Personal Choice

Why You Should Respect Yourself and What You Are

“Respect your efforts, respect yourself. Self-respect leads to self-discipline. When you have both firmly under your belt, that’s real power.” – Clint Eastwood.

Clint-EastwoodI like the thought that only by respecting yourself and what you are, you can release the power that is within you. And that only by respecting yourself you can have self-discipline.

It is so true that people that lack self-discipline generally, inwardly, lack a deep sense of self-respect. And that, as a coach, a nice way to improve the situation (i.e. the symptoms of poor self-discipline) is to work on the self-respect first.

Even if the world around you – especially if the world around you – resists, it probably means you are creating great stuff. Self-discipline and self-respect are the fuel for this creation. Don’t let ever anyone influence your self-respect. Don’t let your self-respect be taken hostage by anyone!

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How to Overcome the Lies we all tell Ourselves

“It turns out that we lie to ourselves about three things: we view ourselves in implausibly positive ways, we think we have far more control over our lives than we actually do, and we believe that the future will be better than the evidence of the present can possibly justify.” – Tom Asacker in a Business of Belief.

self-deceitThis statement has been proven repeatedly by many studies – like for example, studies that show that 90% of the population believe they are better-than-average drivers. We also generally think we have more control on our future than we really have, forgetting how unpredictable external events can shape our lives and change significantly our destinies – as we often discover looking at how our past life unfolded.

The issue is then, how to get people to still take appropriate action and have the right behaviors while their beliefs do not represent reality? How can we overcome these wrong beliefs?

Beyond making sure people become aware that their view of the world is skewed, the only way to move people is to create emotion (same root!) and desire so that these beliefs can be overcome. Rational explanations backed up by statistics won’t work. Create instead those strong emotions related to fear of loss or emotions related to positive expectations. Speaking to the heart, taking into account these wrong beliefs, is the only way to overcome these artifacts of the mind.

When you come across a situation where these lies are visibly expressed and impede proper action by the person, speak to the Heart!

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Why You Should Better be a Big Fish in a Small Bowl

In his latest book David and Goliath, bestseller author Malcolm Gladwell makes a dramatic point about the fact that we’d better be a big fish in a small bowl than a small fish in a large bowl.

fish_jumping_bowlHe expands this thought through the story of people who choose their universities: “We spend a lot of time thinking about the ways that prestige and resources and belonging to elite institution makes us better off. We don’t spend enough time thinking about the ways in which those kinds of advantages limit out options“. And indeed his examples in the book show that people would probably have been better off in smaller, less known institutions than failing (relatively) in large and more elite institutions.

This thought can of course expand to many areas of life beyond education: the organization in which you work, and even the social community groups you join.

I do fully agree with this statement, which is also at the basis of the concept of niche when it comes to entrepreneurship: better be widely recognized in your specific niche than try to get known in a too wide and crowded segment!

When it comes to you, what choices can you make to be a bigger fish in a smaller bowl?

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Why we Need to Become Used to Failing

Following up from our previous post “Why We Should Stop Treating Our Organizations Like Machines“, let us consider for a moment the consequence of looking at organizations like living systems: Darwinian evolution.

frog catches prey
Another victim of natural evolution!

Darwin has shown that progress and adaptation in living systems come from the evolution of species, whereby the most adapted individuals transmit their genes more effectively than others. In actual terms, in nature, there are a lot of fatal failures. Those who don’t make it through their lifecycle can’t reproduce. Many adapted creatures don’t make it either, possibly through tough luck.

Natural evolution is all about lots of failures and only a few successes. It is tough. That is scary thought for our societies and for us as individuals. Yet successful companies of the internet know how to nurture many initiatives even if a majority will turn out to be failures. Many other organizations don’t know how to do that, leading to people not taking initiatives at all.

The only way to be successful in the Collaborative Age is to expect failure, or at least lack of success, in the majority of our endeavors. This requires a significant mind-shift. Are you ready for it?

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Hope is not a strategy. And Uncertainty is your best friend.

I stumbled upon this statement as headers in a post by James Altucher about what he learned being a trader. As a trader and faced continuously by uncertainty and impossibility to predict the future, he learnt some basic wisdom that should help us in today’s even more uncertain environment.

Uncertainty vs certaintyHope is not a strategy: hoping that something will unfold positively in the future, without any underlying indication, is not very useful. It is counterproductive because you won’t be taking any action. Hope is passive.

Uncertainty is your best friend: it might be a bit rock-n-roll but only thanks to uncertainty can we hope to create our space in the world. If everything was certain, our fate would be decided and why would we do any effort? How could we expect to trace our own way? It is up to those who know how to thrive in uncertainty to create change in the world and to create success for themselves.

Drop passive hope and work on better taking advantage of uncertainty. These are key skills in the world today. When do you start?

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Why Security is a Superstition – and What to Do when Feeling Safe

“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.” – Helen Keller.

medieval castle
Are you sure you’ll be safe behind these walls?

This is a powerful quote. The late Industrial Age brought us the concept of personal security and stability but that was an illusion, and will ever be. As Helen Keller says, avoiding danger and adventure is no safer than plunging voluntarily into it. Still we seem to have a hard-wired need for a feeling of security. This is visible in many ways in our daily lives.

Again and again, life demonstrates that it is better to be agile and changing than to stay in the illusions of security. Which brings to the following conclusion: when you feel safe, enjoy, but it this feeling stays for too long, maybe it is time to put back into question your personal circumstances and start another adventure. Are you ready?

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What to Do When Reaching a Goal Seems Impossible

“When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.” – Confucius

minimal-staircaseThis ancient wisdom is still very much applicable today. It goes against our tendency to let go too quickly of goals that seem unattainable. It just pushes us to revise our present ambitions to avoid despair and still continue towards our lofty goal. It focuses us on adjusting the present level of challenge without doubting that we will reach our goals.

 

 

When you are stuck or overwhelmed by the level of challenge, do adjust the steps so that they are smaller and easier. Don’t change your goals!

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How to Overcome the Stockholm Syndrome of Traditional Employment

Following on our blog “What is so Awful About the Disappearance of Hierarchy?“, and the fact that many people feel attached to traditional hierarchical organizations as a kind of comfort anchor, I find that an interesting phenomenon to prompt thinking is the “Stockholm Syndrome”.

stockholm-syndromeThis psychological syndrome appears after hostage-taking situations, where the hostage might have developed a comfort feeling from small attentions the hostage taker might have had for him/ her. In spite of an overall terrible and violent picture of an hostage situation, it happens that a very strong emotional connection develops, where the hostage defends the hostage-taker. The hostage feels like the hostage-taker cares, whereas this is absolutely not the case.

It might be a stretch, but would it not be a similar case regarding the attachment of many people to traditional, hierarchical organizations? Employees are the first to complain loudly how they feel mistreated, poorly recognized, and how work is a burden; and at the same time, presented with alternative types of organization, they defend the traditional hierarchy because of the comfort provided and the small attentions given from time to time (gifts, bonuses and other recognition material).

We know when we are taken hostage in everyday life when we feel vulnerable, powerless and at the mercy of other people. Don’t let it happen to you even within normal employment: find your freedom space, including financially, and don’t feel at the mercy of your employer. And avoid absolutely the Stockholm syndrome!

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How to Push Ourselves Hard – and Not Break

In our previous post ‘How Courage Is a Skill and How It Can Be Developed‘ we explained that courage can be developed through exercise; and one of these is to expose oneself progressively to harder and tougher situations.

Stretch yourselfAs a health reminder it is important to know how to stretch oneself without over-stretching to the point of rupture or to the point of becoming hurt.

Christopher Penn says it well in this post about his experience in the field of martial arts:
“That’s the danger of a lot of the “self-actualization” advice being given. It’s conceptually reasonable advice – shoot for your dreams – but the uncomfortable truth is that many of us, myself included, don’t always have a realistic perception of where we actually are with our skills, with our capabilities, with our resources. We can believe we have abilities or resources we don’t actually have, and when we try to make our leap, we fall far short of where we believe we should be.”

“So how do you benchmark yourself? You put yourself in adverse conditions that are reasonably safe and you work on breaking your delusions until you know where you are. The easiest way to do that is to try with a reasonably low risk project that forces you to put all your skills to the test.”

It is important to stretch oneself outside one’s comfort zone, and it is also important not to over-stretch so as to avoid to get hurt. The only way is to test the limits and know where to pause for a while. It is only possible to identify this limit by trial and error – and most importantly, by staying conscious of your own reactions, of being aware of your own self.

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How Courage Is a Skill and How It Can Be Developed

Courage is a mental skill. As such, as we know now, it can nurtured and developed – because we can act to change our minds through regular exercise. That is a fundamental discovery of the latest decades as we move into the Fourth Revolution mindset.

weight training
How you need to improve your courage (daily)! – as a metaphor?

As with all mental capabilities it is thus possible to train and develop our courage. Even if we start without having any. It just requires consciousness of the need and dedicated commitment to train.

There are two approaches to this training, which are complementary:

  • dealing progressively by exposing ourselves with more ever difficult situations (like weight training)
  • increasing our knowledge of the situation at hand to diminish the ignorance and lack of skill factor, which increases our fear.

I decidedly believe that exposing oneself to the object of our fear is a great way to train ourselves to overcome the stumbling blocks that we sometimes set ourselves on the way to achieve what we want. I might have a hard time sleeping for a few days before a first, like a speech in front of a large audience or before a CEO of a large company, but the most important is to go for it, willingly.

How do you go for it yourselves?

For more information on this topic, read a complete post by Steve Pavlina, an experienced coach.

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What’s the Point of Being Courageous?

What is courage? “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” – Ambrose Redmoon.

courageous without saddle?
Is it courage when you don’t saddle up?

That idea was even expressed more forcefully by John Wayne: “Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway” (personal note: there is a border between courage and recklessness – that might be the saddle part).

The most important question remains – what is the use of being courageous? Anais Nin gives us the answer: “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage“. We need to be courageous to expand our lives and reach out to our wants, beyond our comfort zone.

Courage in life is not an option. Yes, we are all scared. Still, what about saddling up, right now?

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How to Seek and Practice Joyfear

Joyfear is a neologism I found in Leo Babuta‘s latest writings ‘my pursuit of the art of living‘.

its-risky-addicted2success-picture-quote“Joy is an awesome thing to have, but joyfear is present in the powerful moments in life where joy and fear mix, where we’re taking chances and doing something outside of our comfort zone that both excites us and makes us face the possibility of failure. I now embrace these moments rather than avoiding them“.

I like the concept. Stepping out of your comfort zone certainly creates fear, and also creates joy when is happens. I find joyfear an extremely powerful concept that I try to practice more often. A word that is powerful enough to change one’s life.

As Leo says, “Do not shy away from Joyfear. Seek it out. Recognize it when you happen upon it. Joyfear will change your life, and you’ll never forget the moment you find it.”

Thanks Leo.

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